Counting Elegy
by Sigh of Lethe
Summary: Asuka numbers her sins. It doesn't help. And then it does. (demi-sequel to Galatea)


_**Ichi**_

The fourth mission that she is sent on for WILLE is the first time that Asuka is forced to take the life of one of the Ayanami sisters. She has been ordered to leave no witnesses, and she is a perfect puppet.

Asuka carries the body as far south as she can, and when she can walk no further she digs the grave with her bare hands and caps it with a single uncarved stone.

 _Asuka offers a silent prayer that any Ayanami sisters that came before her Rei will forgive her for being left out of her count, but in her heart Rei will always have been the first — Rei whose grave does not exist in this world, Rei whose grave is marked by as many stones as her name: Rei_ _who died because Asuka was not there to die in her place._

 _ **Ni**_

The second time that Asuka's hands are stained with the blood of an Ayanami sister is on a joint mission with Four-eyes and some faceless WILLE grunts. The paltry amount of information gained is not worth the price paid, no matter what Dr. Akagi says.

When the nominal leader of the soldiers approaches her to protest the time she spends burying the body ( _"_ _It's against regulations, ma'am, and she was the enemy"_ ), it is Mari who silences him with a furious tirade and gives Asuka the time she needs to finish her duty. It takes her hours, but nobody else dares step out of line with the Fourth Child glaring them into submission, serious for the first time that Asuka has ever seen.

 _Asuka will never thank her, but it is the first night since the Second Child's_ _awakening that she has not eaten dinner alone. She finds it less unpleasant than she had feared she might_ _—_ _and that scares her most of all._

 _ **San**_

When the third time comes, Asuka is unable to find it in herself to be surprised. Gendo Ikari's ruthless use of the Ayanami sisters shows no concern for their survival, and all of her attempts to reach out have been met with incomprehension.

Even so, she is not so numb that her hands do not tremble as she pushes the earth aside — and yet when she falters for a brief moment, she finds a second pair moving alongside her own. Asuka does not ask Mari why she has decided to help, nor does she act on her instinctive desire to reject the assistance; if Mari, too, will remember the fourth of the Ayanami sisters, that is more than Asuka could have ever hoped for.

 _When she returns to her room that evening, there is a flute on her bed. Asuka has never played before, but she will learn — and the Fourth Child, despite all of her fondness for off-key ditties, proves to have a voice well-suited to elegies._

 _ **Yon**_

When Asuka is done giving her report on her most recent murder, she is presented with the disquieting reality that others, too, have slain Ayanami sisters. After she forces down her rising bile, she asks Misato to keep her informed about such encounters. Asuka isn't sure what her commander sees when she looks at her face, but the woman agrees, and offers her access to the records of missions long past.

Asuka spends the rest of the night buried in files, and the next day she returns to the Wunder with her arms full of stones. It is the work of hours to carve them all, and Mari brings her dozens of replacement knives and bandages for the chunks that her inexpert chiseling takes out of her hands.

 _Asuka mourns that the numbers she carves are all decimals to her own sins, but she fears that if she does otherwise she may run out of numbers before this long war is over._ _When Misato asks why she has a circle of rocks around her bed, Asuka keeps her lips closed — if the woman claiming to be her_ _commander cannot recognize a graveyard_ _when she sees one, the Second Child will not enlighten her._

 _ **Go**_

The fifth time is the worst, because Asuka thinks for a second that she might have gotten through to the girl — a hope that is forever dashed when the Ayanami sister's supposed backup places a bullet in the girl's back. They are too far out for there to be time to get the girl to any doctor that might have a chance of saving her, so Asuka puts a hole in the man's head and holds her latest victim as she bleeds out.

The fifth time is the first that Asuka has allowed herself to cry. She is unable to find words to answer when the girl asks Asuka why tears are flowing down her face, and that silence will live forever as one of her greatest regrets.

 _She must be an idiot, Asuka thinks, because there is a part of her that insists that the sixth Ayanami sister would have survived if only Asuka could have found the words to tether her to this world. Her nightmares are haunted by the girl's face — while the rest of the world sees_ _them as identical clones, Asuka alone knows that no two are truly the same._

 _ **Roku**_

Number six is an accident. Asuka doesn't even know that the Ayanami sister is there until her shot has detonated the fuel canister, and the poor girl's body is so damaged as to be nigh-unrecognizable. The smell of burnt flesh causes Asuka to gag as she lifts the corpse into her arms, but she owes this girl more than any of her victims to date — she is the first with whom Asuka had not spoken.

She is the recipient of innumerable horrified stares when she walks onto the Wunder with the disfigured body in her arms, but she ignores them all and commandeers a lifeboat. She has heard that Viking heroes in ages past were buried at sea in burning ships, and the seventh Ayanami sister deserves nothing less. Mari collects wood and gasoline as Asuka stands guard over the soon-to-be pyre, and together they release it into the open water — six white stones placed on the floor that will soon turn black with ash, then sink under the waves.

 _It is after this that Asuka begins to fear that using numbers as names makes her as cruel and impersonal as Gendo Ikari, but she cannot stop now — it is by numbering them that she is reminded of the weight of her sins, and she has_ _never been good at coming up with names anyway. Rei, she thinks, would understand — and there is no one else whose opinion she would care to hear._

 _ **Nana**_

Even though Asuka's soul is drowning in an ocean of innocent blood, the seventh time still shakes her. The eighth Ayanami sister sought to die — there can be no other explanation for why she had been between Asuka and the bullet. The girl had not wavered when Asuka spoke, so she would not have been marked for death by her companions, and she hadn't been there before the sound of the shot had filled the air.

The only other possibility is that the eighth Ayanami sister sacrificed her life for Asuka's, and that is an idea so terrifying that she would rather believe the girl had been suicidal than admit to herself that such a thing could have been possible. Even so, the Second Child dyes each of the seven stones that she places on this grave red with her own blood.

 _She is silent during dinner that evening, no matter how many ridiculous jokes Mari_ _cracks; when she finally speaks, it is only to ask how one can be certain that one is not a ghost. Mari can give her_ _no answer, and Asuka understands at last why the Fourth Child is numbered as twice the Second._

 _ **Hachi**_

By the time she faces the ninth Ayanami sister, Asuka has realized that she will never be human — she is as much a monster as the Angels she once fought, and her speech has changed to reflect this truth. This battle is Eva against Eva, and Asuka prays that her ninth innocent victim has the strength to bring down the beast she faces even as she begs the girl to recognize that Gendo Ikari is not worthy of loyalty.

When the battle is over, Asuka is left to dig a grave large enough to contain an Evangelion. She does so alone, with nothing but her small hands: it takes her weeks, and she neither eats nor sleeps. A monster has no need for those things, she thinks, and it is only at Mari's insistence that she resumes those luxuries once her task is complete.

 _In the solitude of her room, Asuka swears to the corpses that litter her_ _floor that the next Ayanami sister she butchers_ _will be the last — she understands that Gendo Ikari's madness must be stopped, but Mari is a capable pilot, and Asuka is tired._

 _ **Kyuu**_

The tenth Ayanami sister ejects. When Asuka tells the girl to make a choice for herself, she chooses to live, in defiance of Gendo Ikari's orders. The tenth Ayanami sister is not Rei. The tenth Ayanami sister will never be Rei, _can_ never be Rei, and nor can she replace her.

Even so, it is all that Asuka can do to resist pulling Kyuu into a hug and breaking down when they meet in that blood-red desert. Even the presence of that idiot Shinji means nothing to her now — _Kyuu ejected_. For the first time, she has saved one of the Ayanami sisters.

 _When the Wunder finally picks them up, Asuka refuses to allow Kyuu to be placed into quarantine. She kicks down the wall between her room and its empty neighbor, and when Mari steps up beside her nobody dares protest. For the first time_ _in years, Asuka's sky is bright._


End file.
